From the Editor: Enjoy the natural world through the eyes of a child

My son and I went walking on the beach one day, our heads bent against the wind, looking for shells and other artifacts deposited by the waning tide. Jude stopped more often than I did, exclaiming over the tiniest shell fragment as if it were a rare jewel.

“Go slower, Mom,” he admonished me. “You’re missing all the good stuff!”

“But those are only broken shells, Jude,” I countered. “Let’s see if we can find some perfect ones.”

“I like these! It doesn’t matter if they’re broken. Look! This one looks like a butterfly!”

And so it did. Stopping to examine the remains of a razor clam shell, I saw that indeed it did resemble a butterfly. More important, Jude’s imagination led him to see a butterfly, where I saw only a broken specimen. Clearly, my imagination needed some exercise.

As we walked along, I wondered: Why is it that most adults lose their ability to appreciate the small, the inconsequential, the imperfect? Are we too concerned with the Big Picture to notice the tiny details, the individual pieces of the mosaic that give meaning and texture to our lives? Can adults only pay homage to the perfect, the complete, the best?

In taking long, swift strides along the beach, what was I missing? We were in no particular hurry that day, yet there I was, rushing along, looking for perfection. If I hadn’t slowed down, I might have missed seeing how the sunlight made my son’s hair look like spun gold, or how the shell fragments sparkled like diamonds in the wet sand. Without a child to point out the little details to me, I would have seen just an unspectacular beach instead of the fairyland he found it to be. How much else had I missed using my adult perspective instead of my childlike imagination?

Looking at the world from a child’s point of view can be a refreshing change. When my daughter was about three, I bought her a 25-cent camera at a garage sale. It still had film inside, and she spent the afternoon happily snapping pictures of whatever caught her eye. When the photos were developed, we were amazed to see she had clearly focused the camera on shiny driveway rocks, the sun glinting off a hubcap, tiny flowers in the lawn, and her mother’s scuffed shoes!

By adult standards, these photos were far from perfect, yet every child who studied them thought they were wonderful, because they captured the world as they saw it. Knees and rocks, blades of grass and tiny flowers, big shoes, insects crawling, and even litter can be vitally interesting to a child as he struggles to understand the world by examining its parts. And children don’t care where they start or how long it takes. A three-foot patch of lawn can be Disneyland to a curious toddler looking at bugs for the first time.

It’s true that we parents have a lot to offer our children in terms of knowledge and experience, but they have just as much to teach us. Over the years my three children have often had to remind me to slow down and consider their points of view. While my head was full of larger problems, my children have helped me see clearly the small but wonderful stuff of life.

As you get outside with your children this spring and celebrate the richness of our natural world, remember to slow down and see things as if for the first time, like a child. You don’t want to miss the “good stuff.”